“Yes, it does, and you won’t do anything to help me,” I whined.
On top of everything else, I’d been too guilty to go to Rachel’s anyway. Another reason to hate Gwen, I thought darkly, even though I knew I couldn’t completely hate her. Adam was all smiles to see her this week, as if he knew she had been so close to getting the boot. Or so close to quitting.
Even Raiya seemed to sense Gwen’s antagonism. She’d been absent the whole week as well, making Mrs. Smithe’s attempts at teaching seem devastatingly boredom-inducing.
“I can see that you’re in pain, Hamilton,” Aleia said. “There’s no need to keep complaining about it; especially since it just makes you look like you’re only going to be complaining about it.”
“You and Alora are the ones who could do something,” I objected.
“Be that as it may,” Aleia continued, “I’m glad you came here today. I wanted to catch up with you about Dante.”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“As it happens,” she said with a smile, “I’ll be doing most of the talking. I wanted to tell you about Mikey and Dante meeting at the Time Tower the other day.”
Huh? I had to dig through my brain past the last week of school (Homecoming week), work (sifting through endless paperwork piles during my breaks to find Otherworld, Inc. documents), and no coffee. (Is such a phrase actually in existence in all the languages of the world? It seems too cruel, even by reality’s standards.)
After all the tangents circled around, and all the fluff found its way around my mind, I finally remembered: Mikey had gone to see his dad with Elysian, and I saw Orpheus, and that was why I went to the observatory in the first place.
I’d better start taking Ginseng, I decided.
“Alright,” I said. “Tell me what happened with Mikey and Dante.”
“Not much,” Elysian said. “We would have reported it sooner if there was anything of interest.”
Aleia shook her head patiently. “We don’t always know what information is important,” she reminded Elysian. “That’s why collecting information is so important.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He waved her off before curling around and yawning. “There might be a difference between information and knowledge, and knowledge and wisdom, but it’s time that proves to be the judge in many cases.”
“Well, I am part of Time’s power,” Aleia remarked. “If you’d recall.”
Elysian fake-snored in reply.
I almost laughed. “He gets on my nerves, too,” I told Aleia. “I’ve learned to mostly ignore him.”
“Or argue back,” Elysian muttered.
“For all the good it does.” I shrugged. “So, was Dante surprised to see Mikey?”
“If he was, he hid it well. But then, he would,” Aleia admitted. “He seemed to be waiting for someone, but it wasn’t supposed to be Mikey.”
“He was waiting for someone else? Hmm . . . ” Another question wormed its way to the surface of my mind. “Why did Mikey go to Lakeview after he was finished talking to Dante?”
“What do you mean?” Aleia asked. “You didn’t plan on meeting him there?”
“No. I told him to go back to Rachel’s once he was finished.”
“Which we did,” Elysian said. “You weren’t there. I scarfed up some of Rachel’s sweets when she wasn’t looking.”
“You what!?” I shook my head. “You know I have to pay for that now, right? I can’t let Rachel go out of business because you’re a pig.”
“You’ve brought her plenty of business,” Elysian argued.
“That’s not the point,” I shot back. “Rachel’s told me before that she’s working hard to pay off some of her bills. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have agreed to work for Stefano and Dante in the first place last spring.”
“Don’t you mean your mother will pay?” Elysian asked. “It’s not like you pay your bills.”
“Well, Cheryl deserves to pay off my bills. She’s the one who has all these goofy chefs that never cook anything I want to eat.”
“Can you guys stop arguing?” Aleia interjected, as nicely as possible under the circumstances. “Let’s get back to the subject at hand. Who told Mikey to go to the observatory if you didn’t, Hamilton?”
“I don’t know. No one knew that’s where I was headed . . . except for Orpheus,” I told her. Inspiration struck. “Maybe Dante and Orpheus were working together.”
“What? No,” Aleia protested. “That’s not possible.”
“Why do you defend him so much?” I asked. “Orpheus used to be our enemy. How does he manage to get off the hook so much in your mind?”
“It’s just that . . . he shouldn’t be judged for his actions from before. Corruption is a powerful sort of addiction,” Aleia said. “Once you are imperfect, there’s no escaping it.”
“All the more reason to distrust him, I say.”
“But he was purified. He was given another chance.”
“Not entirely. He was given another chance, but it remains to be seen if he’ll take it,” I argued.
“He’s fine.”
“But he’s the only one who would have known where I’d gone, and where Mikey would have to go to find me.”
“Is it possible that Mikey just went there of his own accord?” Aleia asked.
“You would be the better person to ask for that,” I remarked. “After all, you and Elysian were the ones who saw him talking to Dante.”
“Dante didn’t say anything about the observatory,” Aleia admitted. “And I followed Dante back to his hotel.”
“I told you that Mikey went back to Rachel’s,” Elysian said. “Maybe he met with Orpheus while I was preoccupied?”
“That’s plausible,” I agreed. “As long as Dante definitely didn’t say anything to Mikey, that’s the only possible situation.”
“Orpheus doesn’t even know your friends,” Aleia insisted. “Remember? He doesn’t even know who you are in your regular forms.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because, he’s been under my watch for the last several months. We’ve agreed to be careful about this, too. Remember Rachel’s wedding? You went out of his sight to transform.”
“Where is Orpheus now?” Elysian asked. “This just might be something he’ll be able to answer for us more quickly.”
“He’s been inside with the other priests,” Aleia said. “The nuns have been working in the city, and the priests are working on restoring some of the inside rafters.” She stood up. “I insist we think of another possibility.”
“That’s not how it works,” I murmured, even though another idea had come to mind. “The only other idea I can think of,” I said slowly, “is SWORD.”
“What about SWORD?” Aleia asked.
“I’m not talking about Dante, here. While I was with Logan in the observatory,” I explained, “before I ran into Starry Knight—stop making those kissing noises, Elysian, before I beat you—he was telling me about the meteorite, and how SWORD was able to predict when an attack was going to happen based on the meteorite’s readings.”
“What?” Elysian sighed. “That sounds more like wishful thinking.”
“Wishful thinking has its uses.”
“Wasting time, sure. But not proving anything.”
“Yeah, yeah, but Logan, Starry Knight, and Dante all mentioned it. With three sources like that, it seems to be more credible at least,” I contested.
“But there were no attacks. It was just you and Starry Knight together,” Aleia reminded me.
“Could it be that different?” I asked. “Radiation and all that?”
“Possibly.”
“I don’t know. We’d have to ask someone like Logan about it, and I don’t think he would know.”
“Maybe Jason’s dad would know,” I said. “He’s the one who proposed the idea after he found the radiation signature.”
“Do you think he would tell us?” Elysian asked, skeptical as always.
�
��He might, if it was in a roundabout way.” I shrugged. “I don’t see much trouble with it. I can see if I can get him to talk next time I go over to Jason’s.”
“That is, if he even knows the information himself.” Elysian began to pace around, clearly thinking hard on the topic. “It seems to me,” he said slowly, “that our better bet would be to go and see for ourselves.”
“What do you mean?” Aleia asked. “Dante won’t tell us anything.”
“Stefano might,” I offered. “Dante’s pretty close chums with him. And as much as I like Stefano, there are no records of any payments between Apollo City and Dante’s shadow company.”
“I was thinking more of infiltrating SWORD’s new black site,” Elysian said. He stopped pacing and looked up at us.
We were all quiet for a moment, before we began to offer up some of the obvious pitfalls to that idea.
“We don’t know where it is,” I said.
“We don’t know how to find it,” Aleia added.
Elysian sniffed indignantly. “It’s still the best option we have. The kid at the observatory wouldn’t partner up with SWORD, and there’s no guarantee your friend’s dad would know anything anyway.” He resumed his pacing. “All we would need to do is follow Dante as he goes back to work.”
“I’ve followed him around, and there’s nothing that he really does I would call suspicious,” Aleia admitted. “He goes to City Hall and works from an office there, and then he goes back to his hotel. Other times, he’ll go around the city, but it’s not to work or meet up with people. I don’t even see him drop off any documents or anything.”
“We know where he lives,” I said, exchanging glances with Elysian, “because we’ve seen him—”
I didn’t know why it had taken me so long to figure it out.
“The black site has to be at the hotel,” I realized.
“What are you talking about?” Aleia asked.
“Dante’s got a house here. He says that he’s been at a hotel, but that’s not the truth. Adam and I saw him before.” I turned to Elysian. “You know I’m right.”
“I just hate to admit it,” he agreed, but there was a small smile on his reptilian face.
“Where is the hotel?” I asked Aleia.
“It’s not too far from here,” she said. “Just a few blocks toward the hospital.”
“Good,” I said as I cracked my knuckles. “I wouldn’t want Dante to have to go too far once I’m done with him.”
“Isn’t it possible the house is the black site as well?” Elysian asked.
“Come on, we can search both.”
“The hotel is closer,” Aleia said. “And it wouldn’t hurt to check into our options, Elysian. Surely you can agree with us there, as this is your idea.”
“What if nothing is there?” he asked. “Then what?”
“We go back to the drawing board,” I said. “Come on, it can’t hurt to take some time to do it, especially since we’ve been talking about doing it for months—”
“Hamilton?”
Ugh. Not now.
I could hear Gwen calling my name, and I wondered why I ever thought of her as appealing. Sure, her auburn hair and honey-colored eyes made her attractive. But having been nearly blackmailed into continuing to date her, I was more than ready to overlook all the beautiful things about her and treat her like a dark stain on my high school history.
“Gwen.” I didn’t say hi, didn’t encourage her to continue talking to me, nothing.
It was for the best.
“Hamilton,” she remarked back. She glanced suspiciously at Aleia. “Who’s this you’re talking to?”
“It’s not any of your business,” I reminded her in a hushed voice. “You’re the one who got to break up with me.”
That was the “official” story, anyway.
“Amicably,” Gwen reminded me, her smile steely and stubborn. Even Elysian shrunk back at her grin. “Is this Starry Knight?” she asked, looking back at Aleia.
“No,” I replied.
I must have said it much too quickly and adamantly for Gwen’s preference, because her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Come on, we’re still friends,” she said. “You can tell me the truth.”
“Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean you get to ambush me when I’m talking to my—”
“Cousin,” Aleia jumped in. “You must be Gwen.” She reached forward and extended her hand in a friendly greeting. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
“I didn’t know you had a cousin,” Gwen said. “I thought you said your mother was an only child.”
“She was the only child who went to college,” I said with a shrug. I’d been too surprised at Aleia’s decision to step in that I just went with it.
“Oh. Well, it’s nice to meet you.” Gwen shook Aleia’s hand.
Aleia smiled. “I’m Aleia.”
Gwen looked from me to Aleia and back again. “Sorry to interrupt your day,” she said. “I just thought I’d say hi.”
Liar. I knew from looking at her that Gwen wanted nothing more than to just yell at me.
Or something like that. She was definitely still angry. I hoped she believed me when I said Aleia wasn’t Starry Knight, I thought. That would have been bad.
“Adam and I were headed to the park,” Gwen added.
At her words, I looked down to see my growing brother, Adam, and his four-year-old self quietly hiding behind Gwen.
He knew we were angry, I realized. “Okay then,” I said, trying to smile, “I guess we’ll see you later on, then, right?”
“Not at Rachel’s, if that’s what you were thinking,” Gwen disagreed.
“I wasn’t thinking that,” I assured her with a quick frown.
“Good.” Gwen’s smirk was just too irritating. My concern for Adam’s discomfort immediately evaporated.
“You can’t tell me what to do,” I hissed at her. “Maybe I’ll go there now just to prove it to you.”
“Stop arguing with me,” Gwen shot back. “It was the only thing I asked of you. You could at least give it a few weeks.”
“That wasn’t something you ‘asked’ of me at all,” I reminded her. “You were too busy trying to threaten me—”
I felt my mouth drop open as I realized Gwen had completely frozen.
“Sorry,” Aleia said from behind me. “I figured it couldn’t hurt to stop her.”
I glanced around to see that time had been stopped. “That’s a pretty cool trick,” I agreed.
“She’s still hurt,” Aleia told me.
“You don’t have to tell me that,” I said. “I know. I can see it in her face. She was looking for a fight, I think.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. A lot of people who can’t get a proper sense of closure seem like that,” Elysian said as he began uncurling himself into a larger form.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Gwen’ll freak out.”
“We’re leaving, remember?” Elysian scoffed. “We have a black site to break into.”
“And we’re just going to leave Gwen here?” I asked. “Won’t she notice that we just disappeared?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Aleia told me. “She’ll be fine. She knows about you, right? The best thing we can do is to just to make sure she doesn’t say anything, or she could be in trouble.”
Elysian sputtered with laughter. “With her attitude,” he said, “she’d be in trouble anyway. Asteropy would have a field day with her pride.”
I wisely said nothing, only shaking my head, as Aleia and I climbed up on Elysian’s back. It was time to break into SWORD. I could wait until later to forget about dealing with Gwen entirely.
☼
19 ☼
Black Site
My problems with the power of Time and Memory were reconciled—just a little bit—as we made our way to Dante’s hotel.
The hotel in question was nice-looking. Clean, elegant, and all that good stuff. But the more we walked through it, the more I realize
d just how perfect it was as a secret base for a likely power-hungry organization bent on world control.
Staff layoffs and turnover rates, and both legal and illegal reasons behind the changes to the staff would go unnoticed, so long as normal visitors got their sheets washed and a chocolate candy on their pillows. Everything had to be “clean.” Rooms could be booked for numerous nights under different names. Cash payment.
Yes, a hotel would be the absolute perfect place to set up a secret base. This was even more creepily clear as Aleia, Elysian, and I all made our way through the uber-quiet halls.
I began to feel uneasy, because we didn’t have much of a plan. I felt like we should have thought this out more thoroughly.
“Shouldn’t we call Starry Knight?” I asked. I nearly flinched at the clear quality of my voice. It was so blunt against the surrounding silence.
“She’ll know my power is in play, but I can’t call her here,” Aleia said. “There’s no demon attack, anyway. We’ll be fine.”
“How do we even find SWORD, though?” I asked. “It’s not like anyone’s here to help us.”
“We can check the records,” Aleia said. She gave me a playful smile as she added, “There’s no denying that we have the time.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve been checking enough records this week.”
“Good. More won’t kill you,” Elysian muttered.
“Says the lazy dragon who watches the news all day.”
“Being informed is a good thing,” he retorted.
“Only if you know what to do with the information.” I sighed as I pushed a worker, stilled between the moments of time, away from the main computer.
It wouldn’t work.
“I guess we’ll have to do this by paper,” I said with a grimace, pulling out the files on the side of the desk. “Great.”
“Look for funny names,” Elysian suggested.
“I don’t know if we’ll have to worry too much about it,” Aleia said. “Listen.”
Our voices dropped and our ears perked at her direction. There were noises coming from down the hall.
“Someone’s not frozen,” I said. “That’s not possible. Is it?”
“Our souls are bound outside of Time,” Aleia said. “So another fallen Star or immortal being could be here.” She pursed her lips together in thoughtful consideration. “I wonder if SWORD seems to know so much about the demons and fallen stars because they have some among their ranks?”
Remembering (The Starlight Chronicles Book 4) Page 14